Suicide squirrel starts 30-acre fire

A fire spread over thirty acres in East Texas, damaging eleven cars, a motorcycle and a house in the process, while volunteer firefighters struggled to control the blaze.

And the cause of the conflagration?

A squirrel.

Texan news station KLTV reports that the fire was started by a squirrel walking along a power line. As regular readers will be able to guess, the suicide squirrel’s next move was to jump into a transformer.

This caused the squirrel to catch fire. The squirrel, once ablaze, promptly fell off the transformer, where the dry conditions helped the fire to spread.

Keith Newburn , Chief of the Bullard Volunteer Fire Department, wisely noted: ‘This time of year, with conditions as dry as they are, it’s not really that rare. I’ve fought several fires in the past that were started by squirrels that got in to transformers.’